He became the youngest captain in NHL history, way back in 2012, at the age of 19 years, 286 days – 11 days younger than the previous title holder, Sidney Crosby. He succeeded Milan Hejduk, and said at the time, “I was a little bit shocked at first. I didn’t expect this at all, especially this early in my career.”
That decision has been second-guessed plenty since. Not so much in a “Landeskog is a bad leader, not captain material” sense, but more like…maybe it was just a little too soon. Some of the teams he played on had some real veteran guys, like Jarome Iginla and Francois Beauchemin and Alex Tanguay, etc. Giving captain’s orders to guys well above one’s age can’t be easy.
And now? Now, entering this past weekend, the Avalanche was the second-youngest team in the NHL, at 25.5 years of age on average, behind Buffalo’s 25.2. (The Avs’ average age took a bit of a jump Wednesday with the addition of 29-year-old backup goalie Andrew Hammond to the roster).
Landeskog is still younger than the team average, still just 25 years old. But this is his seventh season, and he has the second-longest tenure of any Avs player (a tie, with Semyon Varlamov) behind Erik Johnson. Now, this is more of his team. And since the departure of Matt Duchene a couple weeks ago? It’s looked even more his team, on and off the ice.
Landeskog had another great two-way game Wednesday in Colorado’s dominant 3-0 win over Dallas. He scored the Avs’ final goal, in the third period, and won 7-of-9 faceoffs (78 percent), four shots on net and a plus-3. Talking earlier in the day about how he views captaining this team, especially in the post-Duchene era, Landeskog said that while he doesn’t think it’s changed much, he did acknowledge it’s changed maybe a little.
“I don’t think it’s more my team any more than it was three weeks ago, necessarily. It’s our team as a group, and yeah, I have the ‘C’ on my chest. But I think, generally with this young group that we’ve got, it’s kind of forced me to take another step and maybe sometimes being more vocal now,” said Landeskog, whose nine goals in 20 games puts him on a pace for 37.9 goals, which would be a career high. “There’s so many guys in here without much experience. But other than that I’m still just trying to be me, trying to lead by example and do my job.
“We thought we were young at the start of the season, but we’re even younger now,” he said. “And I see that as a positive thing, a good thing. It’s a fun challenge. I thought we did a great job of not letting the distractions (of the Duchene situation), the headlines and the social media, get the best of us. We’re growing together, and we’re growing in the right direction. Everybody here wants to be here, wants to win and be part of the solution.”
The captain is pointing the way.
